News and comment about DC and other urban areas for non-colonials from the Progressive Review, edited by Washington native Sam Smith, who has covered national and local DC since 1957, written four books and helped to start various national and local organizations including the DC Statehood Party, DC Humanities Council and the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. He wrote the article that led to the creation of the DC statehood movement

Wednesday, July 2

BAD DAYS FOR SUVS

DC Fire DepartmentUnits were dispatched at 3:33 PM on Saturday, June 28th for the report of a vehicle into a house in the 2200 block of Nicholson Street, Southeast.Those first on the scene found a Chevy Suburban, traveling East bound on Nicholson, veered off the street and went head on through a two story duplex structure on the corner of Prout and Nicholson Streets.Six people were inside the house at the time of the accident.

Firefighters were able to stand ground ladders to the second floor and assist a 13-year-old girl and an 83-year-old woman down the ladders to safety.They were not injured.A 19-year-old man was in the basement at the time and was able to get himself out.Three other people were on the first floor, including a 43-year-old woman who was hit by flying debris.She was transported for observation of what was a minor injury.Two others on the first floor were not injured.

The 35-year-old driver of the SUV, however, suffered serious injuries and was medevaced to a nearby hospital for further treatment of traumatic wounds.His condition was last listed as stable.MPD was investigating the cause of the crash..

We proposed that DC become a state, an article that led to the
creation of the DC Statehood Party. Years later both the Washington
Post and the NY Times editorially endorsed the idea.

We argued that the historic buildings on and around Pennsylvania
Avenue (running from the White House to the Capitol) should be
saved contrary to official plans of the time. These plans were
eventually reversed and the buildings were saved.

We published an expose of DC property tax assessments that helped
spur a successful class action suit changing the way property
is assessed.

In the 1960s we proposed neighborhood councils similar to the
ones DC would get in 1974.

In the 1970s we ran a ground-breaking article on problems of
city's latinos.

We proposed bikeways in the 1960s.

We proposed community policing in the 1960s

We opposed and helped stop the planned freeway system that would
have made DC like an east coast Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1970s, we argued that the war on drugs would
not work. It hasn't.

We argued for light rail and other transit alternatives in the
1970s that were later widely adopted.

Your editor has been a
musician for many decades. He started the first band his Quaker
school ever had and played drums with bands up until 1980 when
he switched to stride piano. He had his own band until the mid-1990s
and has played with the New Sunshine Jazz Band, Hill City Jazz
Band, Not So Modern Jazz Band and the Phoenix Jazz Band.

APEX BLUESSam
playing with the Phoenix Jazz Band at the Central Ohio Jazz festival
in 1990. Joining the band is George James on sax. James, then
84, had been a member of the Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller
orchestras and hadappeared on some 60 records.More
notes on James